Browner to leave within weeks

Carol Browner, President Barack Obama’s top energy and environmental adviser, plans to leave the White House in the coming weeks, White House officials said Monday night.

Browner, who served as Environmental Protection Agency administrator for all eight years under President Bill Clinton, has emerged as one of the most experienced Washington hands in the current West Wing.

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Her calm, authoritative television presence during last year’s BP oil disaster made her one of the few government officials whose stature was enhanced in the aftermath of the Gulf of Mexico catastrophe. But passage of a comprehensive climate change bill, a career-long goal and the primary mission of her office, collapsed last year and seems unlikely for some time to come with the current House Republican majority.

Browner’s departure comes as the West Wing undergoes a heavy makeover, including the arrival of chief of staff Bill Daley, a rare outsider in the top echelons of the administration. She was among a number of Obama officials in the recent running for the job as deputy chief of staff. Instead, she will head for the exits as Obama looks to buff up his business credentials.

White House aides Monday were mum about what would happen to the Office of Energy and Climate Change, except to say that Browner, a former Senate staffer to Al Gore, believed energy issues would remain front and center for the president.

“Carol is confident that the mission of her office will remain critical to the president, and she is pleased with what will be in the [State of the Union address] and in the budget [next month] on clean energy,” one White House aide told POLITICO. “The president’s commitment to these issues will of course continue, but any transition of the office will be announced soon.”

Browner will “stay on as long as necessary to ensure an orderly transition,” the aide said, and she thinks the administration is in a good place to defend Obama’s green priorities, beginning with Tuesday night’s State of the Union address and the upcoming budget request.

Even so, some of Obama’s allies on and off Capitol Hill, who two years ago considered Browner the leader of a dream team on their issues said they were concerned about the latest shakeup on the eve of a State of the Union where the president is expected to move to the center.

“This does strike me as a quiet kill, so to speak,” said a House Democratic aide who works on energy and environmental issues, including the 2009 cap-and-trade bill. “If there were a sacrificial lamb, it could have been on health care, financial issues, on a whole number of other things. But it’s the climate czar that’s going down.

“I don’t know the exact circumstances of it, but [by] the circumstantial evidence, I think the timing is frankly fairly frightening,” the staffer added.

The Obama administration is about to face a full assault from Hill Republicans and some moderate Democrats over the EPA’s authority to regulate for greenhouse gases. Browner had experience dealing with an antagonistic GOP Congress while leading EPA under the Clinton administration. Environmentalists were hopeful she could have played the same role on Obama’s team.

“She has been a tenacious advocate for a new clean energy future, and her articulate and strategic voice in the White House will be very missed,” said Gene Karpinski, the president of the League of Conservation Voters. “We hope the administration continues to put a very strong person in this important position.”